I didn't downvote but I thought it was a weak comment: it's a generally valid perspective but doesn't seem tailored to the actual news, which is mostly tailored to large capitalisation/turnover companies.

The general pro-vs-anti regulation dimension of the argument over tech policy seems to lack the necessary nuance if it doesn't ask about antitrust. The lack of antitrust regulation in the US has meant that the SV pipeline which fifteen years ago supported a diverse tech landscape is at risk of degenerating into one that only aims to produce targets for monopolists to buyout. It's a possible future of your "1st model" I'd rather we were more worried about.

Are there any actual cases of EU startups being fined under GDPR without being given a chance to fix their stuff. I was under the impression that the enforcement so far has been pretty lenient.

The real problem is not the fines, but to comply to all of them.

For example, EU article 13 has a direct impact on my product (my users can upload custom resources). Good thing that Belgium didn't implement it yet. But when they do, I probably need to move my business to Delaware or something.

They claim that article 13 is to reign in the big companies like YouTube. But in the end this also makes sure that EU has a hard time of building their own YouTube.

Anyway, I looked into it, and it seems possible for me to move my business abroad when we get that far.

But all this basically proves my point. It's easier to build a startup when you are outside of the EU.

As a caveat, I built business around the EUCD (Article 17, previously 13). It doesn't matter where the business is based. Up until you operate in EU you will have to be compliant. That said, for platforms below certain size the compliance is fairly simple which is the same you already have under the E-commerce directive.

For a context, I'm EU national that moved to US to build a business here. US does appear freer on its surface, but everything is much more convoluted. As an example, most states have at will employment rules. That means workers can leave any time they want and employers can fire them anytime they want. But then there are many other regulations and case laws that make this essentially impossible. There is a whole predatory industry that is built around this where fired workers sue for $80k because they know that a counsel for the employer will charge $100k and it's cheaper to settle.

I would much rather have clear rules of operations, even more strenuous ones than this.

That does not make US less regulated. It makes regulations unpredictable and unevenly enforced.

Also, cookie banners are mostly bad faith restriction implementation. You can have functional cookies with no banner. What you cant have are those tracking cookies which is what the whole thing is about.